Gerusalemme e il pellegrinaggio ad loca sancta nella pastorale tardo medievale

As the Fourteenth was the century of the Conciliarism, of the Franciscan Observances diffusion, of the redefining of euro-mediterranean boundaries and – in Italy – of new regional political assets, for those and other reasons in that period the idea and practice of pilgrimage deeply changed, and the centrality of Jerusalem in the Latin Christendom decreased its importance. In the late medieval preaching the issue of pilgrimage to Jerusalem was marginal and mostly stereotype. One symptom of the deep cultural change taking place it is apparent from the fact that Franciscan friars, while profoundly involved in the maintenance of Holy Land shrines, promoted in Italy new devotional approaches to Jerusalem, intended in a symbolic sense: the reproductions of the holy places as the “Sacro Monte” of Varallo and the “Gerusalemme” of San Vivaldo.